It doesn't HAVE to end in tiers

The tier system to control the virus has not worked, and the next version of it won’t work either.

The impact so far is a clear upward drift. If you were in tier 1, you moved up into tier 2, while those in tier 2 moved up into tier 3. Once in tier three there was no way out.

If the tiering approach was working, you would expect to find areas moving downwards into a lower tier. It would be a bit like watching a hot-air balloon land: there could be bounces, but eventually areas would find themselves landing in tier 1. That has not happened.

Why ?

It seems that in every tier, people have taken a pick ’n’ mix approach, deciding which restrictions to stick with, and which to modify to match their needs. Some are willing to take more risks than others, and some simply see any restrictions as an infringement on their freedoms. This latter group, by the same logic, must have an urge to drive on the right and never wear a seat belt. But then logic is not their strongest suit.

In effect, this means that the tiers are probably all exactly the same, each with a population comprising the extremely cautious, the tier-accepting, and those largely ignoring all restrictions. No wonder they are not working.

Maybe there is a solution there.

Think for a moment how easy it would be to stay healthy if we could actually see the virus, if it was obvious to the naked eye. Avoiding it would suddenly be easy. As it has no visual impact, we don’t have that as an option.

The next best thing is to avoid people most likely to have the virus, and those taking risks while ignoring the scientific advice. And we could make this very visible, very cheap, and very effective. Visible risk would be easier to assess and avoid.

If we issued every person with three badges – traffic light badges, one green, one amber, one red – we could reasonably ask everyone to wear one during every public moment out of their house. The three colours would represent the degree of risk the individual was taking that day. The colours could be defined like tiers:

Green: super-cautious and taking the virus very seriously; obeying tier 3 restrictions at all times; verging on a personal lock-down; remaining socially isolated whenever possible; have not hugged anyone in the last 3 years; wear a mask at all times; remove visor only to clean teeth; would do virtue-signalling but don’t want to waft the virus about

Amber: flexibly cautious; seeing family under the radar; bending restrictions to suit personal circumstances; taking small risks; wear masks whimsically; only hug people who familiar and never in shops; dangerously and haphazardly well-meaning

Red: ignoring all known restrictions and finding ways to subvert them whenever possible; proud to be libertarian; convinced of personal invincibility; risk-taking no problem; negative altruism; sociopathic loose cannon; hug promiscuously uninvited whenever possible; have a daily target for invading others’ personal space; masks are for wimps; have heard about science and want no truc with it;

In a household, all members would have to wear the badge of the highest risk person in the house. Two greens shacked up with a red would all wear red outdoors.

If you saw someone without a badge, it would be easy to assume that they were in the red category and avoid them. There could even by peer pressure resulting in reds re-thinking their behaviour.

The badges would make it easy to join or avoid queues, and to assess risk more easily. Cleary joining a group of greens would be a safer bet than a group of reds. It would be easy to identify the former and avoid the latter. People would be nationally in voluntary tiers on a permanent basis until the R number shrank away like a hibernating snail.

This would allow the lunatic libertarians to do their thing while allowing the rest of us to avoid them until they self-culled.

Supermarkets could arrange red, amber and green checkouts. Petrol pumps could be colour-coded. Risk would suddenly be visible. The R number would plummet.

There would not be the hassle of trying to enforce tiers against strong public resistance, and everyone could feel that they were taking appropriate action to do their bit to reduce the virus.

And at the cost of three badges per capita, the cost would be low.

It won’t work because you cannot trust people to behave with integrity ? Well, the same can be said for self-quarantine. The same can be said about people slipping over the tier borders for a drink or two. The same can be said for mask-wearing. The same can be said for anything non-mandatory, and there are some who even flout mandatory measures. The badge approach has some advantages, and it is cheap.

Come on, let’s give it a go. It can’t be less effective than all of the government’s current strategies. Oops. Did I say ‘strategies’ ? Slip of the tongue.